Notes · Drama and TheatreUK · A-Levels

Set play from List A

This topic teaches the method of studying a set play chosen from List A - a play first performed before 1956 - as a piece for live performance, from at least two of the roles of performer, designer and director. It covers reading the play and its social, cultural, historical and theatrical context, interpreting it from the three perspectives, preparing key moments for the open-book exam, and answering the extended-response question. Because AQA rotates the List A set plays, the emphasis throughout is on transferable method rather than on any particular title.

5 sections~21 min reading time2 competenciesLevel Foundation 1 · Standard 3 · Advanced 1

T·0555 / 15

Exam profile

AO3 · Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of how a set play could be developed and performedAO4 · Analyse and evaluate interpretive choices for a set play and justify them

Operators:identifydescribeexplaininterpretjustifyanalyse

basic level

AS-Level expects secure knowledge of a set play and the ability to propose and justify performance and design choices for specified moments.

higher level

The full A-level requires confident interpretation of the set play from at least two roles, rich contextual understanding, and extended, well-evidenced exam responses.

Depth

Text

Contents · 5 sections

Set play from List A

What a List A set play is#

FoundationAQA 7262 Component 1 (set play from List A)Ofqual GCE Drama and Theatre subject content

How to study a set play

Fig. 1Studying a set play follows a repeatable method - from reading the text and its context to interpreting it from the roles and preparing to answer for an audience.

One of the two set plays studied for the written examination is chosen by your centre from List A: a list of plays first performed before 1956. The date matters, because it means every List A play predates the wave of change that transformed British and world theatre from the mid-1950s onward, and so belongs to an older theatrical world with its own conventions, staging assumptions and social context. Whatever the particular title your centre selects, you are studying a play that was written for the theatre of its own time and that you must now understand as a piece for performance.

The crucial thing to grasp is that a set play is not studied as a piece of literature to be analysed on the page, but as a blueprint for live performance to be realised on a stage. Every question you meet in the exam asks you to think practically: how a moment could be acted, designed or directed, and what that would communicate to an audience. Reading the play, therefore, means reading it as a theatre maker - noticing its opportunities for staging, its shifts of mood and tension, its demands on performers and designers - not merely following its plot or themes.

For the List A play you study the text from at least two of the three roles of performer, designer and director. This is a slightly lighter demand than the List B play (studied from all three), but it still requires you to hold more than one viewpoint: to be able to discuss, say, how a performer would create a role in a given scene and how a designer or director would shape the same moment. Knowing which roles you are expected to apply, and being fluent in switching between them, is part of preparing this play well.

Because Component 1 is an open-book exam, you take a clean copy of the set play into the room, so success does not depend on memorising the words. It depends on knowing the play so deeply as theatre - its structure, its context, its characters and its opportunities - that you can turn to any moment and immediately reason about how to bring it to life. The sections that follow build that depth: reading the play and its context, interpreting it from the three roles, preparing key moments, and answering the exam question.

Worked example

Reading a set play as a piece for performance

You open your List A set play at a scene where two characters argue over a dinner table. How do you begin to study this moment as a theatre maker rather than a reader?

Look for performance opportunity
Note what the moment offers a performer and a designer: the shifting status in the argument, the pauses and interruptions, the table as a physical barrier or battleground, the food and props as tools.
Track the tension
Follow how the tension rises and falls across the scene - where it tightens, where it breaks - because that shape is what your staging must communicate to an audience.
Read the stage directions
Attend to any stage directions (entrances, movements, silences) as clues to the playwright's intended action, deciding whether to honour or reinterpret them.
Ask the practical questions
For at least two roles, ask the practical questions - how would a performer play the shift in status? how would a designer use the space and light? - turning reading into interpretation.

Result: The scene is approached as a piece for performance - reading its opportunities, tension and stage directions and asking practical questions from the roles - the theatre-maker's reading the set-play study requires.

Typical mistakes

Studying the set play as literature (plot and theme) rather than as a piece to be staged and performed.
Relying on the open book to carry you, instead of preparing deep interpretive and staging knowledge in advance.

Active revision

For any pre-1956 play you know, write two sentences: one naming a moment rich in performance opportunity, and one saying which two roles (performer, designer, director) you would find most rewarding to study it from.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: AQA AS and A-level Drama and Theatre (7261 / 7262) specification (AQA)

Reading the play and its context#

StandardAQA 7262 Component 1 (set play knowledge and context)Ofqual GCE Drama and Theatre subject content

The contexts of a set play

Fig. 2A set play is understood through four contexts - social, cultural, historical and theatrical - each of which can inform and justify a performance choice.

Studying a set play well begins with a secure command of the play itself: its plot and structure, its characters and their relationships, its themes and ideas, and its language and style. You need to know how the play is built - its acts and scenes, its shape of rising and falling tension, its climaxes and its resolution - because structure is what your interpretation must serve. You need to know the characters deeply enough to make performance choices about them, and to understand the play's central concerns well enough that your staging can bring them out. This is the foundation on which every interpretive choice rests.

For a play first performed before 1956, context is especially important, because the play grew out of a world different from your own. Four kinds of context matter. The social and cultural context is the society the play depicts and was written for - its class structures, its beliefs, its manners, the position of women, the assumptions of its first audiences. The historical context is the period and events that shaped it. Understanding these lets you grasp why characters behave as they do and what the play meant to its original audience, which you can then choose to preserve or to reinterpret for a modern audience.

The theatrical context - how theatre was made and staged when the play was new - is just as important for a performance-focused study. A pre-1956 play was often written for a particular kind of stage (frequently the proscenium-arch or 'picture-frame' theatre), with the conventions, acting styles and design possibilities of its day. Knowing the original staging conditions - the type of theatre, the scenery, the lighting technology, the acting style - helps you understand the play's built-in assumptions about performance, and gives you a baseline against which your own interpretation (faithful or radically re-imagined) can be measured.

Context is not knowledge for its own sake; in this subject it always serves performance. You research the play's world in order to make better, more informed interpretive choices and to justify them. A designer who understands the social meaning of a costume in the play's period can decide whether to honour it or to update it for effect; a director who understands the play's original theatrical conventions can decide whether to reproduce or to subvert them. The strongest set-play study, therefore, holds text and context together and always turns them toward the practical question of how the play could be realised for an audience.

Worked example

Turning context into an informed choice

Your List A play depicts a rigid class hierarchy typical of its period. How could this contextual understanding inform a specific design or directorial choice?

Establish the context
Research the social context: in the play's period, class was marked visibly in dress, speech, deference and the physical arrangement of rooms and servants, and its first audiences would have read these signs instantly.
Decide the interpretive stance
Decide whether to preserve this so a modern audience feels the period's rigidity, or to update it so the class theme reads for today - a legitimate choice either way, but one you must make deliberately.
Make the specific choice
If preserving it, a costume designer might mark rank precisely through fabric, cut and condition, and a director might stage the deference physically - the lower-status characters kept standing, lowered or at the edges of the space.
Justify by effect
Justify the choice by its effect: the visible hierarchy makes the audience feel the world's inequality in their bodies and eyes, so the play's central concern with class lands without a word of explanation.

Result: Contextual knowledge of the play's class world becomes a specific, justified design and staging choice, shown to serve the audience's understanding - the way context is meant to be used in this subject.

Typical mistakes

Learning context as detached background facts rather than using it to inform and justify interpretive choices.
Ignoring the original staging conditions of a pre-1956 play, which shape its assumptions about performance.

Active revision

For your set play (or any pre-1956 play), write four short notes - one each on its social, cultural, historical and theatrical context - and, for each, one performance or design choice it could inform.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: Ofqual - GCE AS and A level qualifications (Ofqual)

Interpreting the play from the roles#

StandardAQA 7262 Component 1 (performer, designer, director)Ofqual GCE Drama and Theatre subject content

Interpreting a moment from the roles

Fig. 3Set-play study interprets each moment from the roles, every choice anchored in the text and aimed at the audience.

With the play and its context secure, the heart of set-play study is interpreting the text from the roles - turning your understanding into concrete performance, design and directorial ideas for specific moments. As a performer, you decide how characters could be voiced and embodied: the vocal choices (pitch, pace, pause, tone, volume, accent) and physical choices (movement, gesture, posture, proxemics, levels) that would communicate a character's status, feeling and intention at a given point, always justified by the text and by the effect you want on the audience.

As a designer, you decide how the design elements could realise the play's world and meaning: what a set and staging configuration would look like, how lighting and sound could create atmosphere and shape mood, what costume would tell the audience about character and period. For a pre-1956 play you must also decide your relationship to its original staging conventions - whether to reproduce a period picture-frame world or to reinterpret it - and every choice should be tied to what it communicates, not merely to what looks appropriate.

As a director, you form an overall interpretation of the play or scene and make the staging decisions that realise it: the concept, the style and period, the use of space, the blocking, the pace, and the coordination of performers and designers. Even where you are only required to study the List A play from two roles, thinking as a director about the whole is often what gives your performer and designer choices coherence, because it supplies the governing idea they serve.

The key discipline in interpreting from the roles is specificity anchored in the text. Weak interpretation stays general ('the actor would seem nervous', 'the lighting would be moody'); strong interpretation names a precise, achievable choice for a precise moment and justifies it by the text and its intended effect ('on this line she would drop her volume and take a step back, so the audience sees her lose her nerve'). Practising this move - text evidence, specific choice, intended effect - across many moments of the play is the core work of preparing a set play for the exam.

Worked example

Interpreting one moment from two roles

In a tense confrontation in your set play, one character finally backs down. Interpret this beat as a performer and as a designer.

Anchor in the text
Locate the exact line or action where the character yields, and note what the text gives you - a change of language, a stage direction, a shift in who holds the floor.
The performer's choice
As a performer: on the line of surrender, drop the volume and pitch, let the shoulders fall from a braced posture, and break eye contact, so the audience physically sees the collapse of resistance.
The designer's choice
As a designer: let the lighting subtly warm or soften at that instant, or bring a low sustained sound to rest, so the shift in power is felt in the atmosphere as well as seen in the body.
Serve one effect
Both choices serve the same intended effect - making the audience feel the exact moment the character gives way - and both are justified by the text's own turning point.

Result: One beat is interpreted from two roles with precise, text-anchored choices serving a single effect - the specific, justified, multi-role interpretation the set-play sections reward.

Typical mistakes

Offering general impressions rather than precise, achievable choices tied to specific lines or moments.
Studying only from the performer's role and being unable to answer a designer's or director's question on the play.

Active revision

Pick one moment from your set play and write a short interpretation from two roles: for each, a specific choice for that exact moment and the effect it is intended to have on the audience.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: AQA AS and A-level Drama and Theatre (7261 / 7262) specification (AQA)

Working with key extracts#

StandardAQA 7262 Component 1 (extract-based questions)Ofqual GCE Drama and Theatre subject content

Preparing a key extract

Fig. 4Each key extract is prepared in advance - its beats read, its role choices gathered and anchored in the text - so the exam answer is ready.

Set-play questions frequently focus on a particular extract or moment of the play rather than the whole, so a large part of preparation is identifying and working up the key extracts - the moments richest in performance and design opportunity - in advance. These are typically the turning points, confrontations, climaxes, revelations, entrances and exits, and moments of strong emotion or shifting power, because they give a performer, designer or director the most to do. Mapping these moments across the play, and knowing what each offers, means you are ready whatever extract the exam presents.

For each key extract you prepare a bank of interpretive ideas from the relevant roles: how the moment could be performed, designed and directed, and why. You think about the beat-by-beat action - how the moment develops from its start to its end - and about the specific opportunities it holds: a silence to exploit, a prop to use, a change of status to stage, an atmosphere to create. The aim is that when a question asks how you would realise this extract, you have a considered, specific answer ready rather than having to invent one under pressure.

Because the exam is open book, you can and should refer closely to the extract in your answer, but the open book is a tool for precision, not a substitute for preparation. Use it to quote or point to the exact lines, stage directions and moments that justify your choices, so your interpretation is visibly grounded in the text. What the open book cannot supply is the interpretation itself - the ideas about how to stage the moment and why - which must be developed in your study beforehand.

A useful habit is to rehearse your extracts mentally and, where possible, practically: to imagine or try out how a moment would actually play in space and time, which exposes whether your ideas really work. Ideas that sound good on paper sometimes collapse when you picture the actual staging, and moments of genuine opportunity often reveal themselves only when you think through the physical reality of performance. Preparing your key extracts as living theatre, not just as notes, is what lets you write about them with the specificity and confidence the exam rewards.

Worked example

Preparing an entrance as a key moment

A major character makes a first entrance late in your set play, changing everything. How do you prepare this as a key extract?

Recognise the opportunity
A delayed, decisive entrance is a rich moment - the audience has been waiting, and the entrance can reshape the scene's status, mood and direction in an instant.
Read the beats
Note exactly how the text stages it: what precedes the entrance, how the other characters react, what the entering character first does and says, and how the scene turns.
Gather role choices
Prepare choices - as a director, the timing, pace and staging of the entrance; as a performer, how the character enters (the walk, the stillness, the first look); as a designer, a light or sound shift to mark it.
Anchor and ready it
Tie each choice to the exact lines and stage directions, so that if the exam asks about this moment you can immediately give a specific, justified realisation.

Result: The entrance is worked up in advance as a key extract - its opportunity recognised, its beats read, its role choices anchored in the text - so it can be answered with prepared specificity in the open-book exam.

Typical mistakes

Leaving interpretation to the exam room and relying on the open book, instead of preparing key extracts in advance.
Referring to the text vaguely rather than pointing to the exact lines and stage directions that justify a choice.

Active revision

Map five key extracts across your set play; for one of them, write a short beat-by-beat note of what the moment offers a performer and a designer.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: Ofqual - GCE AS and A level qualifications (Ofqual)

Answering the exam question#

AdvancedAQA 7262 Component 1 (extended-response technique)Ofqual GCE Drama and Theatre subject content

The structure of a strong set-play answer

Fig. 5A strong set-play answer reads the question, then builds developed points of choice, textual anchor and intended effect on the audience.

The final skill is turning your prepared knowledge into a strong extended-response answer under exam conditions. The first move is always to read the question precisely: identify the role it fixes (performer, designer or director), the specific focus or effect it asks you to achieve, and the extract or aspect of the play it concerns. Many marks are lost by answering a question the paper did not ask - writing as a performer when it asked for a director, or describing the play when it asked for staging choices - so disciplined reading of the question governs everything that follows.

A strong answer is built from specific, justified choices rather than description or narrative. Each point should name a concrete, achievable choice for the play (a vocal delivery, a lighting state, a piece of blocking), tie it to the text (the line or moment that prompts it), and explain its intended effect on the audience. This three-part move - choice, textual anchor, intended effect - repeated across several developed points, is the engine of a high-scoring response, because it demonstrates exactly the knowledge and understanding (AO3) the set-play sections reward.

The answer also needs coherence and range. Coherence comes from a guiding interpretation - even in a role-specific answer, a sense of what you are trying to make the audience understand or feel holds the separate choices together. Range comes from drawing on more than one means: a performer's answer that considers both voice and body, a designer's that considers more than one element, a directorial answer that thinks about space, pace and the actors. Developed, connected points beat a long list of thin ones.

Finally, manage the extended-response demands: plan briefly so the answer has a shape, keep every paragraph anchored to the question's focus, and use your prepared key-extract knowledge rather than improvising. Because the exam is open book, support your points with precise reference to the text, but let your interpretation lead. The examiner is looking for a theatre maker's answer - informed, specific, justified and audience-focused - so keep returning to the question 'and what would that do for the audience?', which is the touchstone of every strong set-play response.

Worked example

Planning an answer to a designer question

The question asks: 'As a designer, explain how you would use lighting and sound to create the atmosphere of this extract for your audience.' Plan a strong answer.

Read the question
Identify the role (designer), the means (lighting and sound specifically), the task (create the atmosphere) and the extract; note that only lighting and sound are asked for, so a costume or set answer would miss the point.
Fix the atmosphere
Decide the atmosphere the extract needs - say, unease building to dread - so that every lighting and sound choice has a clear target.
Build choice-anchor-effect points
For each idea, name a specific choice (a slowly dimming cold state; a low rising drone), point to the moment in the text that prompts it, and state the effect (the audience feels the world closing in).
Give range and coherence
Cover both means asked for (at least one strong lighting and one strong sound idea), and let a single atmospheric intention hold them together, then close on the combined effect.

Result: The answer is planned to match the question exactly - designer, lighting and sound, atmosphere - built from developed choice-anchor-effect points with range and coherence, which is what lifts an extended set-play response.

Typical mistakes

Answering from the wrong role or drifting into plot narration and description instead of justified staging choices.
Listing many thin points rather than developing a few, and forgetting to explain the intended effect on the audience.

Active revision

Take a past-style set-play question, underline the role, the focus and the extract, then write three developed points, each naming a choice, anchoring it in the text, and stating its effect on the audience.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: AQA AS and A-level Drama and Theatre (7261 / 7262) specification (AQA)

References & sources

Sources

AQA

AQA AS and A-level Drama and Theatre (7261 / 7262) specification

Ofqual

Ofqual - GCE AS and A level qualifications

Set play from List A

5 sections~21 min reading time2 competenciesLevel Foundation 1 · Standard 3 · Advanced 1

Set play from List A

Key points

Reading a set play as a piece for performance

Key points

Turning context into an informed choice

Key points

Interpreting one moment from two roles

Key points

Preparing an entrance as a key moment

Key points

Planning an answer to a designer question

Sources

Set play from List A

Key points

Reading a set play as a piece for performance

Key points

Turning context into an informed choice

Key points

Interpreting one moment from two roles

Key points

Preparing an entrance as a key moment

Key points

Planning an answer to a designer question

Sources